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CritiSense: Critical Digital Literacy and Resilience Against Misinformation

Firoj Alam, Fatema Ahmad, Ali Ezzat Shahroor, Mohamed Bayan Kmainasi, Elisa Sartori, Giovanni Da San Martino, Abul Hasnat, Raian Ali

Abstract

Misinformation on social media undermines informed decision-making and public trust. Prebunking offers a proactive complement by helping users recognize manipulation tactics before they encounter them in the wild. We present CritiSense, a mobile media-literacy app that builds these skills through short, interactive challenges with instant feedback. It is the first multilingual (supporting nine languages) and modular platform, designed for rapid updates across topics and domains. We report a usability study with 93 users: 83.9% expressed overall satisfaction and 90.1% rated the app as easy to use. Qualitative feedback indicates that CritiSense helps improve digital literacy skills. Overall, it provides a multilingual prebunking platform and a testbed for measuring the impact of microlearning on misinformation resilience. Over 3+ months, we have reached 300+ active users. It is freely available to all users on the Apple App Store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/critisense/id6749675792) and Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.critisense&hl=en). Demo Video: https://shorturl.at/CDcdc

CritiSense: Critical Digital Literacy and Resilience Against Misinformation

Abstract

Misinformation on social media undermines informed decision-making and public trust. Prebunking offers a proactive complement by helping users recognize manipulation tactics before they encounter them in the wild. We present CritiSense, a mobile media-literacy app that builds these skills through short, interactive challenges with instant feedback. It is the first multilingual (supporting nine languages) and modular platform, designed for rapid updates across topics and domains. We report a usability study with 93 users: 83.9% expressed overall satisfaction and 90.1% rated the app as easy to use. Qualitative feedback indicates that CritiSense helps improve digital literacy skills. Overall, it provides a multilingual prebunking platform and a testbed for measuring the impact of microlearning on misinformation resilience. Over 3+ months, we have reached 300+ active users. It is freely available to all users on the Apple App Store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/critisense/id6749675792) and Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.critisense&hl=en). Demo Video: https://shorturl.at/CDcdc
Paper Structure (17 sections, 4 figures, 5 tables)

This paper contains 17 sections, 4 figures, 5 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. CritiSense App
  3. App Design
  4. Design goals.
  5. Functionalities
  6. Models
  7. Datasets
  8. Model Training and Evaluation
  9. Evaluation of CritiSense
  10. Findings
  11. Usability and satisfaction.
  12. Related Work
  13. Conclusions
  14. Limitations.
  15. Ethics and broader impact.
  16. ...and 2 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Examples of fictional social media posts, demonstrating different manipulation techniques.
  • Figure 2: A pictorial example illustrating inoculation theory: expose a weakened misleading message, explain the tactic, then test transfer to a novel post.
  • Figure 3: User satisfaction survey results (N=93). The distribution indicates high platform acceptance, with 83.9% of participants reporting positive sentiment (36.6% Very Satisfied and 47.3% Satisfied). Neutral responses accounted for 11.8%, while combined negative sentiment (Dissatisfied and Very Dissatisfied) remained minimal at 4.4%.
  • Figure 4: User perception of system usability ($N=93$). A significant majority (90.1%) expressed agreement, with 60.4% indicating they "Strongly Agree."